Birthday Week is Over

Other than my computer breaking (again), my weekend was quite good. Saturday was my belated birthday party, and the totally fucking awesome Emily came down from DC for the occasion. Lots of other people came, too, although many couldn't make it due to the rescheduling. There was lots of drinkin' and the usual misbehaving. I got Hello Kitty items, wine, and porn as birthday presents. The people, they know what I like. Emily gave me some porn for straight girls that caused a lot of debate.

I tried not to be all, "Hey, Em, remember the time . . . " all night long, but ended up doing it too much anyway. (Remember the time we were in New Orleans and we pretended to be Humbert Humbert? Remember the time we had that party and we ended up spinning each other in the dryers in the Laundramat across the street? Remember the time the cops came?)

Thanks to everyone who came, because, yay! Party! Now I am twenty-five!

Sunday I was very tired & hungover & also sore, and I went to a Phillyknitters meet-up and got an amazing scarf from my secret pal and worked on The Socks That Never End. Then I went to bed at 10:45, and slept and slept and slept.

There will be pictures when my computer is less fucking broken.

Old & Busted

Well, the hard drive on my laptop is officially dead. (It's like the Tech Gods have cursed me. Whatever I did, I'm sorry, Tech Gods! Is this because I've stopped using Linux?)

It was working fine, and then about three days ago it started making this terrible grinding, scratching noise. It was running pretty decently, but the noise was really terrifying. But I was really busy this weekend, and didn't really have time to deal with it, so I dealt with it by turning the computer off and sticking it in the corner of my living room.

Yesterday I go to turn it on, and it claims it can't find the operating system. Which, not a good sign. Also, more terrible screeching noise.

I actually got through to Compaq tech support on the first try, and convinced them to send me a new hard drive. They capitulated without making me do twenty bullshit things first, probably because I kept holding my cell phone up to my computer and making the tech guy listen to the noise. "Listen," I'd say, "That is not a good hard drive noise. My hard drive is screaming." (I'm against torture in most situations, but a broken laptop calls for desperate measures.)

Oddly, part of what tech support did was have me unscrew the case, take out my hard drive, take the little plug thinger off the pins, and then reassemble everything and put it back together. Which I could do, but only because I'd already taken the hard drive out and put it back when my computer was broken two or three weeks ago. Do they actually expect the average person to be able to do that? The tech support guy didn't even know where the hard drive was on my computer, there's no way he could have walked me through it.

I should have a new hard drive in four to five days, and in the mean time I'll online less, obviously.

Today's Disturbing Discoveries

1. I appear to be linked to from some sort of leg fetish directory. I am listed under the "Broken Leg" category.

Dear Internet:

Please stop objectifying me.

Luv,
Cyn

Also, having a broken leg sucked. It was incredibly painful and embarrassing and horrible. It also was really, really not sexy. My body was something I had to drag around with me, an untrustworthy dead weight that could drag me down with it at any second. Internet, feel free to objectify me for having pink hair or a bad attitude or big tits or whatever. But please, refrain from jerking off to the time in my life when I was in pain and angry and powerless and miserable. (Although, when I put it that way, it does sound kind of hot.)

2. Apparently, I owe a largish sum of money to my student loan people. I'm not exactly sure what happened. I swear they didn't send me the email. (<- Lies. I probably just lost in in The Great Computer Debacle.) Anyway, I appear to have missed at least one deadline. The website was full of numbers, and some of them were in red, which is never good. Anyway, it's paid now, and hopefully the men with wrenches will not come to break my kneecaps.

Ixnay on the End-Bay

I got this awesome package from Adam today. You will note that the package, she is bended. Perhaps the pig latin was too much for the postal service.

Fortunately, the contents survived, and I now have a copy of Colin Meloy Sings Morrisey, and a super rad mix cd.

Random Aside: I had forgotten where I got my habit of using the word "rad" to describe things, and now realize that it must be an Adam thing. Rad.

Christmas at the Rebel with Jimmy

As previously mentioned, Adam and I made it our home for the holidays mission to hit up the San Pedro dive bars. We wanted cheap, we wanted grimy, and we wanted it to have a nautical theme. (What's the good of living in a port town if you're not going to drink it up at Tommy's Yachting Society or The Whale & Ale?)

After I got home from my aunt's on Christmas night, Adam, Wendy and I headed out for some drinking. Unfortunately, it turns out that even dive bars close on Christmas day. We didn't find anything nautical, but we did find The Rebel. (This was after we rejected The Spot due to the haggard looking woman talking on the pay phone outside it.)

Inside the Rebel, there were a couple of guys I probably went to high school with playing pool, a bunch of middle-aged men bellied up to the bar, and the saddest-looking man we've ever seen wearing a Santa hat with four heart-shaped blinking lights across its white trim.

We settled in with our Coronas and down a tequila shot each. Someone at the bar made a toast that went, "I'd like to make a toast to a real great guy, he's a friend of mine. It's his birthday today. Let's hear it for Jesus!" The waitress asked him if he was going to buy the bar a round. He didn't.

The man with the Santa hat came up to us. His name was Jimmy, and he told us that he takes Polaroids of people in the sports bars around town, in case we want our pictures taken. We told him we'll take it under advisement. He also told us that he sells luxury goods. Except that the way he said it was something like, "I sell luxury goods, you know, hats and t-shirts and stuff, they're real nice, I guess you could call them, uh, uh, you know, luxury, um, goods." (I swear to god, it took him five minutes to remember the phrase he used at the beginning of the sentence.)

A skinny pool player came over and says, "Ask them if they like the Beatles, Jimmy."

The pool player set us up. This is like some sort of Rebel hazing. Jimmy loves the Beatles. Jimmy has a real nice picture of the Beatles standing in front of the American flag. No one in our party has the gumption to point out that the Beatles were British.

It's when Jimmy starts talking at great length about how he'd like to beat the shit out of the guy who shot John Lennon that we decide to make our escape. Jimmy isn't a violent guy, nor does he remember the name of the guy who shot John Lennon, but boy would he like to punch him. Adam faked a cell phone call that goes something like, "Oh, you're at the house? We better go back to the house, then."

We fled. We decided not to press our luck by hitting The Spot. We found a liquor store that was open on Christmas, and got some gin. "Let's get something nice," I said, "It's Christmas."

Oh My God I Totally Can't Concentrate On Anything for More Than A Minute

All of my birthday presents feature Hello Kitty and/or yarn. This pleases me immensely. I sort of want to make a large pile of Hello Kitty items & yarn and roll around in it.

I finally figured out how to get Podcasts today. This means that while I work, indie music magically appears in my iTunes. This pleases me. I have vague urges to develop a podcast of my own, but probably will not, as that would require an attention span longer than that of a gnat. Also, if you have not actually heard me speak, I am probably a lot less shrill in your imagination.

People with grad school experience: When did you start hearing back from schools? I want to know now, okay? I don't deal well with waiting for things. You can only expect me to be patient for so long, and then it is time for the distraction from waiting with various destructive behaviors.

I have taken to emailing myself links that I think I will be interested in later, so I do not lose them. Then I have emails I don't really know what to do with. It's fun. Today's links:

Hello Kitty MP3 Player. Yes, please.

Top 10 Reasons Why I Hate Fake Lesbian Porno. This is excellent. This woman is clearly a genius, and should be made president immediately. Probably not safe for work, but I read it at work anyway.

Give Us Real Choices. If you live in Pennsylvania, you should write your state legislators and protest "Chastity Awareness Week." (Personally, I'm aware of chastity, and I'm against it.)

Well, then, that is all. I'm glad we had this talk.

In Favor of Aging

I like getting older. Part of it is, of course, that I am looking forward to being a crotchety old lady and rocking the cardigans and hard candy and being all, "Damn kids! Get off my lawn!" But also, who wants to be young? The older you get, the more control you have over yourself and your life. I get to do way more fun stuff now than I did last year, or the year before last. Being older means you have more friends. Being older means you know more than you did before. It means you don't make the same mistakes you used to. (Or, in my cause, make fewer of the same mistakes. There are some mistakes that I just can't resist.) You have more funny stories. You're better at things than you used to be.

There's way more things to do in this world than any of us will ever have time to do, but the older we are, the more things we've gotten to do. And that's my favorite part of getting older.

In my 24th year, this is what I did: I had two boyfriends for a while. I broke my arm. I got a cat. I went to a lot of indie rock shows. I went to London. I knit a lot. My roommate, who I moved to Philly with, moved away, and I found a new roommate. My boyfriend fell out of love with me, and I cried and drank a lot of whiskey. I applied to grad school. I volunteered for a presidential candidate who didn't win. I got an iPod and it changed my life. I felt at home in my neighborhood. I hung out with my friends, who are the awesomest friends ever. I went home for Christmas. I wrote a lot of entries in this blog.

Grad School, Clint Eastwood, McSweeney's

I have mailed in my Temple application. This means I am now officially done with my applications, and now just need to wait patiently and see what happens. Those of you who think this is the easy part of the process have obviously never met me.

I have heard from various people that Million Dollar Baby is actually a decent movie, but it seems a little full of bathos to me. Every time I hear the radio commercial that tells me that "this movie wraps itself around your soul and doesn't let go," I think, "Jesus Christ, that sounds terrible, and possibly dangerous." Off! Get off the soul! Bad movie! Drop it!

I enjoy McSweeney's Things I'd Probably Say If the Bush Adminstration Was A Weekly TV Show.

Now I Am 25

My birthday: The Most Depressing Day of the Year.

But only because no one's gotten me a LED scrolling belt buckle. Yet.

Schnee!

My birthday party has been delayed due to BLIZZARD, and is now next Saturday. I actually would have enjoyed the blizzard a lot if it hadn't totally fucked up my plans. I guess this is what I get for asking for snow. (In this case, I literally was asking for it. But then, I always am.)

Last night a bunch of my friends (The ones who truly love me, if you will. And also mainly those who live in West Philly.) braved the blizzard and came over to my apartment and we sat around and drank and gossiped.

So really, I'm having two birthday parties. You can't beat me, blizzard! Unless you happen again next weekend, in which case I will just stop taunting fate.

Natalya Gauntlets

(Please do not look directly at the sick person.)

I made these gauntlets using Jodi's Natalya gauntlet pattern. You guys know how much I love gauntlets/armwarmers, and when I saw the picture she posted I knew I had to make them. These are made from two balls of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino, on size 8 needles. They turned out so soft and pretty and warm. I made mine slightly longer than hers (the sleeve parts are 8.5 inches, instead of 6 inches), and my cables twist to the left instead of the right. (I accidentally did my first cable the wrong way, and didn't want to fix it.) This is my first time making fingers, so that was exciting.

Here's a close-up.

Jodi's pattern was very clear and easy to understand. These knit up pretty fast, and I love the way they turned out.

I Am Cursed

So, I'm turning 25 on the 24th. It's sort of disturbing, in that it will probably make me officially Old Enough To Know Better. But, I only turn 25 the once, and so to celebrate, I'm having a (hopefully debauched) party on the 22nd. After all, I better take advantage of the last few minutes of being Too Young To Know Any Better.

The problem? I'm sick. I've got some sort of cold/cough thing with the snot and the coughing and the sick voice, and I'm just praying that it will go away by Saturday, but it probably won't.

Body, if you think this is going to stop me from drinking, you've got another thing coming.

Shuffle Meme

My List:
1. Who Needs Happiness (I'd Rather Have You) - The Mr. T Experience
2. Sea Drift - The Weeds
3. Baby That's Not All - Josh Ritter
4. Winter Is Coming - Elf Power
5. Eventually - Brendan Benson
6. Push It Out - Beta Band
7. Talk About It - David Dondero
8. Water Boy - Imperial Teen
9. 3rd Planet - Modest Mouse
10. Man - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Rules:
1. Open up the music player on your computer. (I used my iPod, since it's got more on it than my computer.)

2. Set it to play your entire music collection.

3. Hit the "shuffle" command.

4. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. That's right, no skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. It's time for total musical honesty. Write it up in your blog or journal and link back to at least a couple of the other sites where you saw this.

5. If you get the same artist twice, you may skip the second (or third, or etc.) occurances. You don't have to, but since randomness could mean you end up with a list of ten song with five artists, you can if you'd like.

(via clap clap blog)

Then I went back to listening to The Postal Service on repeat, as I have for the last three days.

Why I'm A Feminist

Because I'm a woman.

To me, to be a woman and not be a feminist is basically saying, "I have too many rights. Could you please take some away?"

I realize that there are women out there who are going, "But feminists are all strident, humorless and man-hating, and I'm cute and funny and dig the hetero sex."

First, the whole feminist = ugly man hating dyke bullshit is clearly just lies spread by the patriarchy. (I kid. Sort of.) But, seriously, if all feminists are annoying and shrill and hate men, whose fault is that? I'm a feminist, and while I am sometimes shrill, I also make jokes about everything and dig the boys as well as the girls and am pro-sex and knit and wear make-up. If you don't like the feminist movement, then redefine it. All being a feminist means is that you believe men and women should be equal. And if you don't believe that, then I don't want to be your friend.

Everyone should consider themselves feminist, because even if you're not a woman, you probably love one. And don't you think she should have just as many rights as everyone else?

(inspired by Julie's post)

I'm Chilly and I Love It

It snowed on my way to work this morning. Tiny, fluffy flakes that didn't stick. The way to work was empty, because only poor suckers like me have to work on Martin Luther King's Birthday. I got on my train this morning and it was empty. For a minute, I thought was somehow running much later than I thought, but then I remembered. The street was practically deserted at 8:45 am, and I felt like it was snowing just for me.

I've been hoping for snow. We've had this disgusting warm and wet thing going on, weatherwise, and I've been hating it. As far as I'm concerned, if it's not going to snow, there's no point in me moving to the East Coast.

The cold weather made me excited and hopeful again. Saturday it was crisp and brisk, wonderful chilly weather that had me pulling out my hat and warmest coat. I've been wearing the Devil Hat that Mac made for me nonstop lately. I put one of the buttons I made on it, and between the button and the earflaps and the horns, it's the best hat ever. Today I was wishing that I'd worn a scarf. It finally feels like it's actually winter, and I dig it.

I still want more snow, though. Mounds and mounds of it, over everything, please.

Xmas Knitting Goodness

I got tons of awesome knitting stuff for Christmas! I got The Purl Stitch (this was actually a present to myself, but it was on sale), Weekend Knitting, yarn, a Denise Interchangeable Needle Set, and an awesome knitting bag made by the incredibly crafty Ashley.

Check out the inside of the bag. It's all pretty and lined and filled with pockets for knitting stuff.

Rawr!

Of course, none of this stopped me from buying tons of yarn on the yarn crawl I went on with Jill and Laurie today. I'm like an addict.

Car Love & Hate

Waiting for the bus, I notice there's a car parked and running directly across from the bus stop. Then I notice the two people in the front seat are totally making out. After about fifteen minutes, the car drives away.

On my bus ride home, I pass a man getting out of the passenger side of a car. From inside the car, a woman's voice says, "Fuck you. I mean it." He says, "No, baby, I didn't mean it like that."

Robotic Shark Attack!

ROBOTIC SHARK in a ROBOTIC AQUARIUM.

Jesus Christ, people, it just don't get any cooler than that. If the dollar is not pitifully weak against the euro when this thing opens, I am totally there.

Although, actually, it does sound kind of similar to the Submarine ride at Disneyland. Which, honestly, scared the bejesus out of me as a small child.

Linky McLinkerton

You could ask me how long I spent looking at pictures of gay hobbit action at this slash art website, but I would probably just pretend I didn't know what you were talking about.

People's Gayest Moments Ever. Quote: "I probably spent twelve hours sanding glory holes with an electric sander." Awesome.

If you want to know what to get me for my birthday (I'm 25 on the 24th!), consider that I do not yet have a Hello Kitty Picture Phone.

This Vegetarian/Vegan restaurant & store guide needs more entries, but seems pretty cool. Well, except for the graphic design.

Xmas Present: Pink Staples

My mom gave me pink staples for Christmas. I brought them to work and secretly put them in the stapler next to the copy machine. This winsome jape would be a lot more effective if I didn't start giggling madly every time someone went for that stapler, but it's still pretty amusing.

The typical reaction goes something like - Coworker: "Why are you making that face? What's wrong with you? This staple is pink!" Me: "Heh heh heh."

I sort of expected everyone to be like, "Okay, that's funny, now put the real staples back," but instead my manager was like, "Wow, you're really sharing your pink staples with the rest of us? That's so nice!" My coworkers appreciate me.

(Other things I've expected to be reprimanded for but everyone found amusing instead: The time I wore my Bettie Page shirt. The period of time when I listened to Gravy Train!!!! constantly. Calling Jill a filthy whore.)

The staples are really more like this color.

Vote for Me!

Dude, I'm nominated for an award! So go vote for me in the Queeries, because, seriously, how fucking cool would it be if I won a Queery? I'm sort of enamored of just saying the word Queery over and over and over again in my head (Queery Queery Queery), and I could do that all the time if I won one of them.

Of course, the screen shot they're using for my page has a picture of my cat right in the middle of it. Note to Queery Referrals: Usually I am not a crazy cat lady, I swear to god. Also, usually I'm funnier. And cuter. Vote for me!

Xmas Present: Milagro

Milagros are tin or silver icons that Catholics hang up for saints. The milagro is shaped like the body part you want healed. Mine is for my ankle.

Engadget = Hotties?

Does anyone else find the Engadget Boys sort of disturbingly attractive? They're all skinny and rumpled and sort of awkward looking. Which, in Cynworld, equals Hottie McHot Hot.

Dear Engadget Boys,

If you come over to my house, you can totally use my button maker any time you want.

Love,
Cyn

Sophie's Thinking, "Why Does The Computer Hate You, Cyn? Is It Because I Like To Bite It?"

I lost all of my email from 6/2003 until the present. Not sure how that happened. If you think I have your email address, I probably don't.

In good, non-hateful-computer news, I got a button maker this weekend. I am so excited, it's not even funny. I plan to abuse the hell out of the printer at work, but in the meantime I made a couple of buttons out of pictures from old New Yorkers, and they turned out great.

Also, I submitted my UC Santa Cruz application.

Fingerless Mitts

These are the fingerless mitts from Weekend Knitting. I made them using Rowan Kid Classic in a very dark brown color. (It was left over from my Under The Hoodie.) They knit up very quickly. I really love the way the vertical garter stitch looks, and it's stretchy. These are actually a little small, but fit perfectly because the garter stitch stretches so much. I also love the short row shaping. This was my first time wraping stitches, and it turned out great.

I've been wearing them at work, because I sit by the window and my desk is always freezing, and I tend towards cold hands in general. My mitts are soft and warm and hobo-styling.

Here's a closeup.

I resized these images using the gIMP because my illegal copy of Photoshop 5 was lost when I reformatted my harddrive, and my illegal copy of Photoshop 4 isn't working. I would consider actually buying Photoshop, but that shit's $500, so fuck you, Adobe.

Viva La Laptop

Well, I reset the BIOS and ran my Compaq Restore Disks, and my computer works again (sans all of my data). Which means it was, in fact, a virus/spyware/adware. I would take back some of the nasty things I said about HP, seeing as they were right and I was wrong, but I spent five hours on hold.

In order to make myself feel better, I have decided to pretend that I've gotten a new computer. That's exactly like my old computer. It makes having to reinstall everything nicer, somehow.

Also, I am now using Thunderbird for email.

The Mandatory Computer Update

I brought the computer into work, and my totally awesome coworkers managed to mount both my harddrive and my iPod as USB drives on my coworker's tablet PC, which means I saved my email and some other random stuff. I also learned how to reset ownership & permissions on NTFS drives, a skill that is probably incomprehensible to most of you guys, but I'm certain will serve me well one day.

The harddrive was working semi-well outside of the computer. It was hard to tell how well, because of the permissions issues and general USB wonkiness.

Also, it's sort of terrifying to watch someone take a screwdriver to your laptop. Almost as terrifying as reassembling said laptop with a screwdriver stolen from the janitor and incomprehensible notes as to where the screws go. (I'm not sure what "black screws under rubber" means, but it certainly sounds dirty!)

The drive is now back in the computer. I tried to repair my Windows XP install, but setup failed because it couldn't make a folder it needed to make. Tomorrow I try wiping everything out and starting over, and if that doesn't work I'm going to send it back to HP and make them fix it.

Also, I'm totally back my shit up from now on.

Things I Did Yesterday While On the Hold with HP Support

• Made dinner.
• Ate dinner.
• Washed dishes.
• Wondered if the tech support people appreciate my sardonic sense of humor.
• Cleaned my kitchen counters.
• Finished reading The Twenty-Seventh City. (Review: Meh.)
• Cleaned my table.
• Developed an acute hatred of the HP hold messages.
• Finished reading The Boys of My Youth. (Review: Decent.)
• Took digicam pictures of things that I could post here if my computer worked.
• Seamed a wristband I knit four or five months ago and never got around to seaming.
• Gave up and went to bed.

My Lastest Email to HP Tech Support (After Their Latest Crap Advice)

This might be a feasible solution IF MY COMPUTER WERE CAPABLE OF STAYING POWERED UP FOR THAT LONG OR HAD AN OPERATING SYSTEM THAT WORKED AT THIS POINT IN TIME.

If someone had actually read my email, they would have realized that when I contacted technical support about the winlogon.exe issue yesterday, I was told to reinstall Windows XP by booting from the cd. My computer got through about fifteen minutes of deleting my system files before it crashed and powered down.

1. My computer is at this point unable to stay powered up for more than about twenty minutes once it turns on.
2. It's making an extremely loud whirring/grinding noise.

I have a support pack for this computer which states that if my computer is broken, it will be fixed within three days. At this point, I've spent two days working with technical support people who keep telling me to do things that MY COMPUTER IS NOT CAPABLE OF DOING BECAUSE IT IS BROKEN. I have spent a total of FIVE HOURS on hold. I strongly suggest that you start considering that this may be a hardware problem, and FIX IT.

Cynthia

(End Email)

So at this point I'm going to take my computer into work tomorrow to see if one of the NetOps guys can save anything off the harddrive, and then I'm going to try HP's latest crap advice that involves resetting my bios and deleting everything on my harddrive, and then hopefully they'll be willing to take my computer back and give me a new hard drive or whatever already. (If this problem turns out to be like, the battery, or the fan or something and my hard drive is fine, I am going filled with rage. RAGE.)

Have I mentioned that basically everything HP has told me to do has made my computer worse?

Have I mentioned I spent five hours on hold yesterday?

I have a lot of anger right now.

The Art of Losing Isn't Hard To Master

Blogging may be sporadic for the next week or so, as my laptop is currently not working. I'm talking to HP Support to try to get it fixed. This is sort of difficult, as the fastest way to get support is through email, but no computer = no email.

Right now the laptop is not even logging in. HP Support seems to think it's a virus, but I am not so sure, as it's running really loudly.

I'm trying to be zen about all of this, but as we all know, I am not a very zen person. The fact that I'm still covered under my service agreement is helping a little with the zen, though. (I knew there was a reason I bought those things.)

If it takes a while, I may try to dig up some ethernet cord and use my old computer, but if it's just a couple of days I'm going to try to look at this as an opportunity for some un-plugged time. Fortunately, I've got a stack of books I got for Christmas to read in the meantime.

Stupid New Year's Drunks

New Year's Eve really is the worst holiday. I can't remember ever having a really good one. It's like a more high-pressure Valentine's Day. Not only are you supposed to have someone to kiss at midnight, you're also supposed to be at a kick-ass party wearing an awesome outfit.

I was at work.

Work, of course, was a fiasco. The sort of "adding insult to injury" working-on-a-holiday fiasco where nothing works right and you get yelled at by your boss and you're all, "I'm not even supposed to be here!" like in Clerks.

I got out of work at 2 am. The 21 bus, looking packed, passed me as I was walking to the bus stop.

The other problem with New Year's Eve is that it's also a sort of drinking "amateur night," much like Saint Patrick's Day. Everyone in the world feels the need to be as drunk as possible, and they're just no good at it. People need to learn to leave extreme intoxication to the professionals.

Center city was insane. The streets were packed with crowds of drunks searching for cabs. All the cabs were full. Every time one passed, the drunks would wave their hands and yell. The cabs never stopped.

I waited at the bus stop, figuring that I would either get either a bus or a cab, which ever came first. Twenty minutes later, I'd still managed to get neither. Across the street, a couple stood on the corner making out for incredibly long periods of time. It seemed as good a way to kill time waiting for an empty cab as any.

Finally, a cab pulled up next to the bus stop to let people out. I waved at the driver, and he gestured at me to get in. I slid in the curbside door as the passengers climbed out the other side.

Unfortunately, the stopped cab had gathered the attention of a group of drunks. They had been distracted by bickering amongst themselves over which of them would take the cab for long enough for me to slide inside, but now that I was in they lept forward at the cab. I tried to close the door, and a drunk girl latched on to it and leaned in towards me.

"We can split the fare," she said. I tried to pull the door close. She wouldn't let me. She was leaning disconcertingly close to my face. "I'm going to 45th and Walnut," I said. She brayed the drunks' destination at the driver. He said, "No. She's going to 45th and Walnut." The drunk girl registered disapointment and released her grip on the door. I slammed it closed before anyone else could try anything.

It was like my cab was the last copter out of Saigon. The entire ride home, drunks were gesturing wildly and yelling. They kept running out in the street towards the cab. I sat in the back seat and glared.

At a stop light, a drunk guy kicked the cab when the cabbie wouldn't let him in.

The drunks thinned out as we got to West Philly, but they were still lining the sidewalks. My cab's meter looked like it was running a little high, but I didn't feel like complaining. I tipped the cabbie a couple of bucks and felt extremely grateful to be home.

I finally got into my apartment around 2:30 am. I made myself a drink.

Sophie In My Suitcase

As soon as I finished unpacking, Sophie decided she wanted to travel.

Xmas Present: Ginormous Book on Buddhism

I have included myself in this picture for scale. I got this book from a family friend. It's filled with these amazing mandalas, many of which I may turn into posters. It's really pretty. The only issue is that I have no place to put it; it's huge!

(Please ignore that this picture is kind of fuzzy. It's really hard to take a picture while holding an enormous book on Buddhism.)

Xmas Present: Hamster Wristbands

My mother gave me these crazy hamster wristbands. I've been wearing the pink one nonstop since I got it.

Xmas Present: Good Luck Pig

My mother gave me this lucky pig to conteract the Mystic Pig. The pig only has three legs, which the little note that came with it claims makes it luckier. (Insert your own "not for the pig" joke here.) I wish I had gotten a better picture of it, because this is one seriously cute clay pig.

The Sum Total of Seasonal Decorations In My Apartment

Horrible cat lady secret: I forced my cat to stand in front of my little tinsel Christmas tree and look cute so I could take pictures of it.